As much as the worldwide proliferation of wireless voice and data networks have expanded to cover many areas where people travel on the planet, there are many fringe areas which suffer from inadequate coverage to maintain a connection, especially inside buildings or vehicles such as automobiles and recreational vehicles.
Products already exist that amplify incoming and outgoing wireless signals to improve coverage in fringe service areas. However these systems require connecting an amplifier to either a low-performance omni-directional antenna, or they count on the user to accurately aim a higher performance directional antenna by hand, which can be difficult.
Conventional signal boosters do not have self-pointing antennas. Instead, they rely on a person turning an antenna manually to find the best signal. Generally, feedback to the user is provided through the presence or absence of a signal on a compatible mobile telephone or data device. Most telephones do not refresh their signal strength displays at a rapid enough rate to enable a user to make antenna adjustments, monitor the phone's signal strength display, and then iterate move/monitoring to find the best antenna orientation. Thus, finding an optimum position can take long periods of time and be very frustrating to the user.
Creating a control system that automatically points the antenna based on signal strength alone is an improvement. The traditional means for automatically pointing an antenna is to monitor radio frequency (RF) power received and make small adjustments to drive mechanisms (motors, linear actuators, etc.) to maximize the RF power measurement and settle on the best pointing direction. However, this is still inadequate because merely monitoring RF power will not indicate which type of network signals are present at a given direction, since only that non-specific magnitude of the radio frequencies are being directionally targeted. There is no means for determining whether the correct signals are being targeted.
For example, in the case of wireless networks with multiple competing (and incompatible) service providers, including but not limited to voice and data service providers on the various GSM, CDMA, EVDO, HSPA+ and LTE bands, it is possible to point the antenna at a strong source of signal without improving actual network connectivity. This is due to the nature of how wireless carriers operate in that it is possible to subscribe to the services offered by one carrier, accidentally point to an antenna tower which only has service from a competing incompatible carrier, and hence never be able to complete a voice or data connection as a result.
Therefore, there remains a need to provide an automatically pointing antenna that addresses some or all of the drawbacks in the prior art.